Did you know there was a time when you could pay to be Indian? I’m not sure about the reliability of this information but it has become a common meme about pretend Indians (“pretendians”). “It may be fashionable to play Indian now, but it was also trendy 125 years ago when people paid $5 apiece…
Category: Culture
Is Ann Coulter Really White?
Race is a social construct. There’s no better way to understand what that really means than to look at history. “So get this. Some of the eighteenth century founding fathers only thought English and Danish people were white. Even Swedes and Germans were “swarthy.” French certainly were. So Franklin would not have considered me white,…
Second Sight
I think everyone knows what it means when someone has the second sight. Collins Dictionary says, “If you say that someone has second sight, you mean that they seem to have the ability to know or see things that are going to happen in the future, or are happening in a different place.“ A cool thing…
Including the Confederacy
Some people are proud of their Confederate heritage. Personally I don’t see it. Yes, it’s part of our heritage. Yes, those are our ancestors too. But they were traitors. And racists. Racist traitors. It’s a complicated heritage. Mark Sumner (link below) provocatively argues it’s not our heritage; it’s our shame. Ideally, we would want to…
Visiting the Past
Memory is tricky. Modern research suggests that each time we dredge up a memory we re-write it, even if just slightly. Genealogists don’t always allow for that when we work with our own or other people’s memories. Some people even resist the idea. I’ve had people stoutly defend stories that seem implausible or even impossible…